“Papai!” the cavalryman said. “That’s a lot of money, just the same.” Menedemos didn’t answer. He just stood and waited. The other Hellene frowned. Menedemos thought he knew the expression: that of a man who was talking himself into something. And, sure enough, the fellow said, “All right. All right! I’ll take ‘em. You count two drakhmai for one Sidonian siglos?”

“Yes,” Menedemos answered. That gave the other man a very slight break on the rate of exchange. Maybe Sostratos would have worked it out to the last obolos, but Menedemos didn’t feel like bothering. He took the silver, got the last two books in his store out of their sack, and gave them to the horseman.

“Thanks,” the man said. “I’ll carry these till they fall to pieces. I’d pay even more for the books from Herodotos where the Persians and Hellenes go at it. You don’t happen to have those, do you?”

“Sorry, no.” Menedemos hoped he hid his bemusement. Not even Sostratos had thought he could sell history books in Phoenicia. Customers never failed to be surprising. This one went on down the pier. Menedemos called after him: “Lykian ham? Fine oil?”

“No, thanks,” the soldier answered. “I’ve spent all the silver I’m going to. Some men would rather eat fancy. Me, I’d rather read.” He kept on walking.

To Diokles, Menedemos said, “A pity Sostratos is off in the back of beyond. He would have made himself a friend for life.”

“That’s the truth,” the keleustes agreed. “I know my alpha-beta, but I’ve never had much cause to use it. Most of the time, you can find out whatever you need to know just by talking with people.”

“I enjoy Homer, and I think I do like him better because I can read him for myself,” Menedemos said. “Same with Aristophanes -maybe even more so, because you don’t hear him read in the agora all the time, the way you do Homer. But I don’t dive into a roll of papyrus headfirst like Sostratos.”

“He knows all sorts of funny things, I will say,” Diokles remarked. “And what’s really strange is, every once in a while they come in handy.”

“I know.” Menedemos drummed the fingers of his right hand on the outside of his thigh. “It happens just often enough to keep me from teasing him too hard about everything he reads.” His fingers went up and down, up and down. “Too bad.”

Before he went back to Sedek-yathon’s inn that evening, Menedemos bought a sausage half a cubit long; the gut-wrapped length of chopped meat smelled strongly of garlic and cumin. He also got himself a small loaf with olives baked into it: sitos to go with his opson. He chuckled when that thought crossed his mind. Could Sostratos have known of it, he would have chided Menedemos for a self-confessed opsophagos: a man who put the relish ahead of the staple. The sausage was supposed to go with the bread, not the other way round.

Sedek-yathon’s wife dropped the sausage into hot oil for Menedemos. The oil was the same cheap stuff the innkeeper always used. Not only that, but it had done a lot of cooking before that sausage went into it. The smell filled the taproom at the front of the inn. It wasn’t precisely unpleasant, but it was strong.

Emashtart fished the sausage out of the oil with a pair of wooden tongs. She set it on a plate and carried it over to Menedemos. Putting it on the table in front of him, she smirked and said, “Phallos.”

“That’s not how you say ‘sausage’ in Greek,” Menedemos answered. The word for sausage, physke, was close enough that she might have used the other one in honest error. She might have. Menedemos hoped she had.

The way her smirk got wider-and, to his eyes, less lovely-argued she hadn’t. “Phallos,” she repeated, and then went on in her horrible Greek: “You to have biggerest phallos already, eh?” Her eyes went to Menedemos’ crotch.

His went to the formidable length of grayish-brown meat on the table in front of him. “By the gods, I hope not!” he exclaimed. “What do you take me for, a donkey?” He thought Emashtart a perfect donkey, but for different reasons.

She shook her head. “No, just man.” She put a slavering emphasis on the word. Her gaze still hadn’t risen to Menedemos’ face.

A couple of other men were eating in the taproom. They were Phoenicians, though, and gave no sign of understanding Greek. Emashtart could be shameless in front of them without their knowing. Hoping to quell her, Menedemos asked, “Where’s your husband?”

She gave him a scornful look. He’d seen that expression on the faces of more than a few women who’d been interested in him and hadn’t cared about their husbands at all. It was the last one he wanted to see on Emashtart’s. She said, “He drinking.” She mimed lifting a cup with both hands, bringing it to her mouth, and then staggering around, as if with too much wine. Menedemos chuckled. It was involuntary, but he couldn’t help himself; she made a fine mimic. She added, “Not to coming home at alls.”

“Oh,” Menedemos said tonelessly. “How nice.” He drank some of his own wine, then yawned. “I’m going to go to bed early tonight, I am. I’m very, very tired.” He yawned again, theatrically.

Emashtart watched him. She didn’t say a word. Menedemos didn’t like that. He wanted her to believe him. That way, she wouldn’t come scratching at his door sometime in the middle of the night. He’d been glad to have women scratch at his door before. He expected he would be again, once he could forget about this annoying oath he’d sworn to Sostratos. He couldn’t imagine being glad if Emashtart did, not even if she stood in the courtyard naked-maybe especially not if she stood in the courtyard naked.

Finally, despite looking back over her shoulder as she went, she left him alone. He had to eat in a hurry, yawning every so often, so she wouldn’t think he’d been lying about how tired he was-which he had. The sausage, though not quite like any he’d eaten back in Hellas, proved tasty. As he brought it up to his mouth, Emashtart ran her tongue over her lips in a silent obscenity that struck him as far grosser and more disgusting than anything the cheerfully bawdy Aristophanes had ever come up with.

As soon as Menedemos finished eating, he hurried out of the taproom and into the cramped, stuffy little chamber where he’d sleep tonight. He didn’t even bother lighting the lamp. He just took off his chiton, made sure the door was barred from the inside, and lay down naked on the narrow bed. To his surprise, he quickly fell asleep.

Not very much to his surprise, he was awakened some unknown stretch of time later by someone softly tapping on the door. Maybe she’ll go away if I lie here quietly and pretend to stay asleep, he thought.

He tried it. Emashtart didn’t go away. She kept right on tapping, louder and louder. At last, he doubted whether a dead man could have ignored her. Muttering to himself, he got out of bed and went to the door. “Who is it?” he asked, there being one chance in a myriad it was somebody besides the innkeeper’s wife.

But she answered, “I are it.”

“What do you want?” Menedemos asked. “And what hour is it, anyway? “

“Not knowing hours,” Emashtart said. “Want hinein”

Menedemos coughed. He gave back a pace. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised she knew the nastiest, lewdest verb in the Greek language, but he was. The word had implications of taking by force that usually made it implausible when used by a woman to a man; with her speaking, though, it somehow seemed anything but.

“In the name of the gods, go away,” he said. “I’m too tired.”

“Want binein,” she said again. “Want binein!” She was almost shouting, careless of what the other luckless lodgers at the inn might think. Had she spent all this time pouring down wine and thinking of assaulting Menedemos?

“No,” he said. “Not now. Go away.”

“To let in,” the Phoenician woman said. “Want binein! To be happies.”